The Story of the Diamond Necklace

"RATHER more than a century ago, in the year 1764, just as death had closed the career of the once all-powerful Madame de Pompadour, who had long since exhausted all her arts in vain endeavours to revive the jaded passions of her royal lover, and when the star of the notorious Dubarry was gaining the ascendant, as the Marquis and Marchioness de Boulainvilliers, attended by servants and outriders in the gayest of liveries, were driving over in a carriage and four from their hotel at Paris to the chateau of Passy, of which pleasant village the marquis was seigneur, their attention was attracted to a little girl about eight years of age, clad in the beggar's accustomed livery-rags and tatters, who, carrying a younger sister on her back, ran beside the carriage, then proceeding up the hill at a slow pace, and appealed for charity after the following strange fashion:-"Kind lady and gentleman, pray take pity on two poor orphans descended from Henry the Second of Valois, King of France.""